Ask HN: Selling laptop, how to wipe information?

1 points by deafcheese ↗ HN
I'm selling my laptop, and I'm wondering what everyone uses to wipe computers clean of personal data before passing it on.

4 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 18.1 ms ] thread
I normally use a Linux boot disk to boot in live CD and then I format my disk and use an utility that writes random bits on the drive. I can't remember how this utility is called but I think a quick google search will give a lot of results.
You want this: http://www.dban.org/

By the way, this isn't really an appropriate question for HN.

Thanks for the suggestion.

However, I find the other part of your comment non-constructive. If you don't think that my question is inappropriate for HN, fine. But just writing it off without giving any justification or advice doesn't do anything to improve the community.